As expected, China’s new Communist Party chief Xi Jinping was elected president of China on Thursday by a landslide. The final tally: 2,952 in favor, with one opposed and three abstentions.

　　如外界所料，上任不久的中共中央总书记习近平周四以压倒性优势当选中国国家主席。最终投票结果是2,952票赞成、一票反对、三票弃权。

　　In other words, Mr. Xi nabbed 99.86% of the vote, beating out electoral luminaries like Paul Kagame, who was elected president of Rwanda with 95% of the vote in 2003, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who won re-election with 97.6% of the vote in 2007.

　　换句话说，习近平的得票率为99.86%。在这方面，他超过了很多高票当选的领导人，如2003年以95%的得票率当选卢旺达总统的卡加梅(Paul Kagame)和2007年以97.6%的得票率连任的叙利亚总统阿萨德(Bashar al-Assad).

　　The question now burning up Chinese social media sites: Who was the lone voter who dared vote against the country’s anointed leader?

　　中国社交媒体网站上目前热议的话题是：唯一一个胆敢投票反对中国指定领导人的会是谁?

　　China’s president is elected by delegates to the annual meeting of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress. While voting on new Chinese leaders is largely a formality and the outcomes are rarely in doubt, at least one dissenting vote has become common in recent years. In 2008, Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, was re-elected to a second term as president with 2,956 votes in favor, three against and five abstentions.

　　中国国家主席在中国橡皮图章议会全国人民代表大会的年度会议上由代表们选出。虽然选举中国新领导人主要是走过场，而且结果几乎没有悬念，但近年来经常出现至少一张反对票。2008年，习近平的前任胡锦涛连任第二届国家主席时，有2,956票赞成、三票反对和五票弃权。

　　The production of slightly blemished vote tallies serves as a small way for the party to present the selection of new leaders as the product of “intraparty democracy,” rather than as a process dependent on the back-room horse trading among current and retired officials.

　　略有不同声音的投票结果在很小的程度上可以让中共向外界显示新领导人的选举是一个越来越透明的过程，而不是一个依靠现任及已退休官员幕后讨价还价的过程。

　　Yet judging by the profusion of jokes on Sina Corp.'s SINA +0.33% popular Weibo microblogging service, the announcement that only one delegate had voted against Mr. Xi, whose ascension to the post has long been considered a fait accompli, seemed to have the opposite effect.

　　不过，从新浪公司(Sina Corp.)旗下人气颇旺的微博服务平台上的大量玩笑来看，只有一名代表投票反对习近平当选的消息似乎产生了相反的效果。习近平当选一直被看作是既定事实。

　　“The dear individual who voted against, are you OK?” asked one Weibo user.

　　一位微博用户问：投反对票的那位亲，你还好吗?

　　“Congratulations to the one person who voted no,” wrote another.

　　另一位网友写道：恭喜那位投反对票的人。

　　While some heaped praise on the anonymous rebel for having the courage to swim against an overwhelming tide, most were more interested in discovering who he, or she, might have been.

　　就在有人表扬这位勇于逆流而动的匿名“造反者”之际，大多数人对于找到他或她更感兴趣。

　　Some speculated that it could have been Li Yuanchao, Mr. Xi’s reform-minded vice president, who was denied a spot on the Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee last October, while others figured it could have been someone who felt threatened by Mr. Xi’s recent push to clean up the party’s image.

　　有人猜测此人可能是李源潮，即习近平手下有改革思想的副主席。李源潮去年10月没能进入拥有极大权力的中共中央政治局常委会。还有人认为，习近平近来采取了重塑中共形象的举措，投反对票的可能是某个感到受此举威胁的人。

　　A few historically minded commentators recalled the case of Zhang Dongsun, a philosopher and official in the Ministry of Culture, who is thought to have cast the lone “nay” vote in Mao Zedong’s election as head of the new government following the Communist Party’s victory in 1949. He would go on to lose his professorship during the Anti-Rightist movement in the 1950s and was sent to a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution, where he eventually died.

　　几个不忘历史的评论人士想到了张东荪的例子。他是一位哲学家，曾任中国文化部官员。1949年中共胜利后，在选举毛泽东为新政府主席时，张东荪被认为投了唯一一张反对票。在上世纪50年代的反右运动中，他失去了教授职务，后在文化大革命中被送去劳改，最终死在那里。

　　“When Mao found out he was one vote short and said, ‘If you don’t want me, then don’t vote for me,’ people figured he’d forget about it,” journalist Liu Xiangnan wrote. “In reality, he remembered it very clearly.”

　　记者刘向南在微博上写道：在毛知道选票少了一张时，虽然口中说“不选就不选吧”，人们后来也都以为他忘了，其实他清楚记得。

　　But one of the most popular guesses was that Mr. Xi himself had cast the lone no vote.

　　但最多的猜测之一是，习近平自己投了那张反对票。

　　“He definitely was the one who voted against himself,” wrote one microblogger. “It’s a sign of his genuine humility.”

　　一位网友写道：肯定是他自己投票反对自己，说明他真的很谦虚。

　　Odds are we’ll never learn the identity of the lone dissenter. But given the litany of monumental tasks he faces from tackling apocalyptic air pollution to rebalancing the world’s second-largest economy it’s certainly possible that Mr. Xi was indeed the source of that lonely ballot.

　　可能我们永远也无法得知这唯一的反对者姓甚名谁，但鉴于习近平面临从解决糟糕的空气污染到实现世界第二大经济体再平衡等一系列艰巨任务，他自己投反对票是完全可能的。